Mai kept a straight face, not betraying a single emotion after hearing his absurd words.
When he finally shut up, there was a lull in the room as Mai seemed little different from an ultra-realistic icy statue, exuding a sense of indifference at his words and his extended olive branch of trust.
As a minute passed in painful silence, Orion opened his mouth to speak again, but Mai beat him to it.
"The system is something everyone has. Every person I've encountered in the past few months has one. It's like a game. You kill zombies, you gain experience, and level up. With each level, you gain stat points and ability points. You can spend stat points to strengthen certain physical or mental aspects of the body, and you can spend ability points to improve or learn new abilities that the system infuses in your mind," she said in one breath. "The completed Japanese Mastery that you got should have cost ten ability points. Equivalent to the gain of fifty levels. There is also a currency that you get randomly when you kill zombies. It shows up as credits on the system, but doesn't seem to have any uses beyond serving as a replacement for money instead of a direct barter.
"I see," he said. "Thank you for telling me that, Mai."
"Please refer to me by my last name," she said coldly. "We are not on a first-name basis."
"I should've stuck to English then," he mumbled, only to receive a sharp glare from Mai. "Sakurajima-san. How's that?"
She nodded. "So what are your plans? What help do you need from me, and how do you plan to cure my sister?"
"Not even bothering with small-talk, huh?" He chuckled. "I want you to know that curing your sister is not an overnight thing. In the best-case scenario, I would need a year or two to gather the necessary resources for that cure." Seeing her frown, he raised his hand. "Let me finish. I know that she will probably start decomposing sooner or later, despite you doing your best to keep her satiated and safe. Ultimately, she is currently undead."
"She's not like the others," Mai shook her head. "Her heart beats and blood pumps through her body. She doesn't breathe, but she is definitely different from other kinds of undead."
"That is why I have thought of a temporary solution. To put her in stasis. Something of a cryogenic freeze that will preserve whatever remains while I take the necessary time to get the cure."
"Our world doesn't have that technology," she shook her head. It seemed that she had accepted the fact that he was from another world and might not have the same common sense.
"Don't worry, I have a solution for that as well. But for that, we need to kill around a million zombies, give or take. And I need to be the one to land the killing blow. If there are stronger zombies, then the number might go down."
"You want to collect the energy that makes us level up," Mai said, deducing a part of his powers. "How will you create a cryogenic chamber with that?"
"Trade secret," he smiled wryly. Yeah, I don't think I'll be able to keep her in the dark for too long…Then again, as long as she isn't an enemy, it doesn't matter. Keeping everything a secret is for pussies. Plus, it's not like I'll tell her about the Power of Creation. I will be sacrificing Origin Energy to summon the necklace.
"Understandable," she nodded, not prying further. Still, he could feel that she wasn't happy with his answer. "Tomorrow, I'll take you to meet one of my close friends. She was the one who even gave me the hope that it might be possible to heal Nodoka. It will be easier to start clearing zombies with more people at your side."
"Got it," he nodded. "I'm going to go up on the roof to scout out some places with a high density of zombies. Once we meet your friend, I want to start getting a move on those zombies."
"All right," she nodded while looking at him.
Suddenly, there was another silence in the air where Orion had no idea what to say.
"Guess I'll get going then," he said, turning around after grabbing his Katana from the table where Mai had placed it. Damn girl, couldn't even offer me a seat or a glass of water…
Just as he was about to exit, he heard her standing up.
"Thank you," she said softly. "I'm not an ungrateful person. Regardless of your intentions, you are willing to help me and are deserving of my gratitude."
Even her thanks sounds like she's doing me a favor…
"No sweat, Sakurajima-san," he chuckled. "See you in a bit."
"Don't forget your words from before."
"Hmm?" He asked.
"The door. You said you'd fix it."
"Oh, yeah. Totally… I'll do that."
What am I supposed to do with so many confusing signals, huh?
…
After scouting the surrounding locations from the roof, he had a solid plan in mind about the areas that he wanted to hit the next day. He didn't plan on going too far since they were still going to leave Nodoka here, which meant that by the time night fell, they would have to come back. Still, the things that Mai had told him about her system had given him a lot to think about. Considering the currency, he was sure that there would eventually be things like item shops that people would be able to access and spend that money on. Similarly, the whole thing with spending ability points to improve techniques or knowledge, or spending stat points to improve physical or mental attributes. Everything shared significant similarities with how the Exile Gear worked. It was just that it seemed to have less transparency, hiding the collection of Origin Energy behind levels.
Could I find a way to inspect someone else's status?
He immediately acted upon the thought, calling out to his gear.
Knowledge: Rune of Inspection
Origin Energy Cost: 2,500 Units
I will first need to get an introduction to runes to see how these things work. Otherwise, I might end up getting fucked over and lose the points invested in the rune. This gear clearly doesn't like giving me warnings beforehand and only tells me once the deed is done…
He still remembered how both the warning about integration for the sword techniques and the warning about the prerequisite to maintain the integrity of Japanese knowledge were told to him after he got those things.
Soon, he went back down and followed his words from before, fixing up Mai's door with some tools he'd found in the apartment. While it sounded like a meaningless thing, he didn't mind if she could have a little more peace of mind with some minor effort from his side. He was, after all, the one who broke into her home.
Once that was done, he ended up back in his apartment and made himself some instant ramen using boiled water from the kettle. He hadn't had the chance to ask Mai about the generator, but since she hadn't bothered saying anything, he assumed that they had enough to last for a while as long as he used electricity sparingly. And considering the lengths he was going to help her sister, he presumed that freeloading a little off of her wouldn't matter much.
"At least the weather is pleasant. I don't know what I'd do if this were in the middle of the summer…" His eyes drifted to the window as he ate the ramen, looking at the streets packed with zombies and no hint of activity from anywhere else. He paused with his fork halfway up to his mouth, looking down into the cup of noodles. "Man, this is depressing… Maybe I could get some cooking knowledge to attract her to eat with me. I doubt she's good at cooking with all that acting going on… She should've been surviving mostly on instant stuff as well."
As the thought crossed his mind, an attractive scent wafted to his nose, making him raise a brow. Turning his head to look for the source, he stopped at the door.
"No way…" he left the cup of ramen on the table and walked to the door, opening it. Immediately, the scent of a delicious steak assaulted him, making him emotional.
"I had to jinx myself, huh?" He looked at Mai's door. "Goddamn enhanced senses…I'd rather just close my nose."
He felt that it would be a little too shameless if he upped and knocked on her door, begging for food. His pride didn't let him do that.
With a defeated sigh, he closed the door and went back to the table where he had been eating alone. The ramen seemed completely unappealing in front of the tantalizing aroma of Mai's food coming from her apartment.
"Forget it, I'll just go to sleep and improve my physique," he left the ramen on the table and went into the bedroom.
Stripping out of his clothes, he lay down on the bed and opened his status.
Name: Orion Vaelor
Exile Gear: Infinite Dream
Specialization: Creation
Origin Energy: 24.38 Units
Physique: 3.46
Matter Limit: 8 KG
Techniques: (Expand)
Knowledge: (Expand)
First, he communicated with his gear to use one unit of Origin Energy to increase the matter limit. Immediately, the eight turned into a nine, and his Origin Energy got reduced by a unit. He sensed an ethereal and malleable presence appear beside his katana inside the gear's internal space. Summoning it in front of him, he saw what seemed to be a gray mix of solid, liquid, and gas sloshing around with an incomprehensible cohesion, keeping itself limited to a rough spherical area in front of him.
He first tried something simple and imagined pure iron atoms, with twenty-six protons and neutrons in the core and twenty-six electrons revolving around them at different energy levels and distances. Also, recalling how Great Red had helped him imagine Titanium for reference, he tried to imagine the iron atoms in the same way. Immediately, from the formless, incomprehensible substance, the material gained a metallic sheen and transformed into iron before immediately releasing enough heat to scorch him without even coming into contact with him.
"Fuck!" He screamed, quickly making the block solid from its previously liquid state. Unfortunately, the blanket was already on fire while his arms were suffering from third-degree burns. The only thing that kept him from panicking and losing control was the experience of the previous night's horrible pain when he had the gear improve his physique—that was even worse than this. Quickly sending the matter back into gear, he grabbed the water beside him and drenched his arms. Then, he tried to put out the fire by quickly folding up the blanket and blocking any oxygen from reaching it.
Soon, he was lying on the ground, panting, with his arms aching from the horrible burns that had practically destroyed his skin.
"No one told me creation would be so dangerous… Is there an introductory course for this, like for runes?" His voice was hoarse and almost pleading. He couldn't imagine blindly exploring creation like this. Creating something complex was most likely to kill him even if he took the necessary precautions. All it took was a single misaligned electron in his atomic template, and he might even end up in a nuclear explosion.
Knowledge: Introduction to Creation
Origin Energy Cost: 50,000 Units
"Motherf—" He suppressed his curse behind a deep breath, trying to calm his agitated heart.
"2500 years sounds about right… Those two gave me something so overpowered and then nerfed it to no end."
Too tired to try anything else, he closed his eyes, mentally commanding the gear to improve his physique with all of his remaining Origin Energy.
The immediate pain that followed was countless times worse than the previous night and quickly sent him into shock as his brain shut down to protect itself from the constant and endless pain. Still, his unconscious body continued twitching for hours that night as his physique was strengthened far beyond its current strength.
***
All right, we've got a good number of chapters going now. I want to try to get this story up on the Power Stone leaderboard tomorrow. When I post tomorrow's chapter, please make sure to give the story as many powerstones as possible.
As an incentive, if we can stay in the top five for the whole day, I'll post two chapters the day after.
If you like the story, follow it and leave a review, and whatever else, it motivates me a lot. I try not to leave any mistakes in the chapters, but if you find something glaring, let me know, and I'll try to fix it.