2. A Fight For Survival.

As Leon picks up the weird looking talisman, a blue window pops up. Apparently it's a talisman that allows the user to summon a skeletal wolf that will follow your commands.

"It really is just like a game." Leon thinks to himself.

This talisman uses mana to summon the skeletal wolf and intelligence decides how effective the wolf will be.

Since this is his only weapon right now, he decided to put all three cores into upgrading his intelligence. As soon as he does he feels a rush of energy fill his body.

Leon then starts making his way out through the side door of the building that leads to an alley. He doesn't see any zombies fortunately, so he looks up to the side of the building and sees a ladder leading up to the roof.

It's a bit of a ways up but Leon just gets a good running start and leaps up the wall before jumping up and grabbing the bottom of the ladder and pulls himself up.

Climbing up to the roof he finally gets a decent view of his surroundings. There is a couple of fires off in the distance and some helicopters flying around. On the main street in front of the store are quite a few zombies.

It looks to be about 10 of them just in front of the store. Maybe the military is sending rescue parties out to rescue survivors, but he shouldn't rely on just that alone in case they don't send a rescue squad they will need to have a backup plan.

"Maybe if I can make it back to my house we can see if the TV still works or maybe use the radio to find out what's goin on." Leon thinks.

After climbing back down, he goes back into the store room to let the others know his plan.

Just when he walks inside the others are still resting and chatting about what they should do next when they hear the door open and Leon step inside.

"Leon, you're back. What did you see out there?" Rob asks.

"The whole city is in chaos. I'm going to try to make it back to my apartment to try and find out what's going on. You guys can follow if you want."

The others look at each other trying to decide what they should do. After a few seconds Beth gets a determined look on her face as she stands up and starts packing some food and water. Leon does the same and grabs a plastic bag.

Rob and Rachel talk with each other for another minute before they stand up and decide to go along as well.

"Since your place is closer then ours we'll go with you until we find out what the situation is." Rob says and Rachel nods.

"Alright, let's take what we can and we'll go. We just have to make it down the road from here to get to my apartment building."

Rob and Rachel both grab a bag of food and water and once they're done the group makes their way out to the front of the store.

Before they rush out into the street, Leon tells the others about the talisman he found. They seem a bit confused as to how such a thing is possible but they decide to just go with it for now.

Leon readies himself to open the door with Beth the cashier right behind him and Rob and Rachel taking up the rear. They all tried to look for weapons earlier but it being a grocery store they didn't manage to find anything useful.

"Everyone ready?" Leon says as he looks back at the others.

"Yeah, let's crush these bastards." Rob says.

Both Betty and Rachel nod their heads slowly with a slightly terrified expression.

"Three... Two... One!" Leon tells as he pushes the door open. Immediately all the zombies in the street turn towards them and charge forward.

Leon holds the talisman in front of himself as he summons the skeletal wolf.

WHOOSH!

A swirl of energy rushes between the two groups. Once it clears the groups sees a waist high wolf made of bones appear and charge towards the zombies. It pounces up and crushes a zombies skull between its sharp teeth.

"Holy..." Betty let's out an exasperated breath when she sees the skeletal wolf.

Leon quickly snaps out of his shocked state and rushes out to a zombie that is slowly approaching the group. He then jumps forward with his knees and slams the zombie to the ground with Leon landing on top of its chest.

He then rolls off, the others aren't idle either as they begin making their way down the street while fighting off the ones that follow.

The skeletal wolf is going ham, egg, and cheese on these bitches, clawing their arms right of their bodies and ripping their heads right off their torso.

Leon runs down the street after the group while kicking the zombies knees snapping them backwards and making the already slow zombies even slower.

Pretty soon most of the zombies are taken care of as the continue down the street a little ways. Leon's wolf is clacking its paws on the road as they run.

"Here it is! Let's hurry inside!" Leon says while holding the door open for the others and the skeletal wolf. Leon slams the door behind them and clicks the lock. Once inside they start pushing the nearby furniture from the lobby in front of the door.

Thankfully nobody got hurt and they made it safely inside. Leon leads the group over to the elevator and hits the button for the 5th floor where his room is.

While in the elevator Leon finally gets a good look at his new summon. It looks just like an ordinary wolf beside missing all its flesh. It's teeth and claws also look more intimidating than a normal wolf's.

Just as he is thinking this the door opens to the 5th floor and they follow Leon to his room. Oddly enough, he hasn't seen a single soul since they entered the building.

It's eerily quite but at least there's still power in the building which is a good sign.

Leon gets a really strange feeling about this but decides to go to his room and find out what's going on in other places of the world. Maybe this whole thing is just happening in his city.

Leon unlocks his room as Beth and Rachel rush inside along with Rob and then Leon locks the door behind them.

Leon runs over to his TV and flicks on the news. Fortunately it turns on.

"Reporting live from downtown... Can't believe... So much destruc... MI.. litary.. struggling.... Walking corpses!... CLICK!

The news feed cuts off and the group is left in silence with their thoughts. If even the military are struggling with these zombies then things are much worse than he thought.

Leon doesn't have any family to speak of or any friends really so he decides to focus on his own survival. Considering that he was able to get those cores and his talisman off the zombies they killed, Leon thinks he should try and kill as many as possible for new items and to upgrade his stats.

The other members of the group are different though. Apparently Beth has some friends she's worried about but no family.

Rob and Rachel both have families that they need to get back to and make sure they're okay. Rob has a little sister that he takes care of that should be at his house. Rachel said that she is worried about her parents.

Before making any decisions the group decides to rest up for the night. Leon tells the others they can sleep on the guest bed and couch. He then walks to his room to get some sleep. It's already late in the night.

Rob ends up sleeping on the floor with some blankets and pillows while Beth takes the couch and Rachel sleeps in the guest bed. The night passes without incident as Leon wakes up before everyone else.

After changing clothes he walks out to the kitchen. That's when he notices the skeletal wolf following behind him with slight clacking sounds. He turns to pet the dog.

"Sit down boy."

CLACK!

"Whoa... Didn't expect that."

Even though the wolf doesn't have any flesh or muscles on its face Leon is somehow still able to tell that it's very happy.

Leon grabs some instant noodles from one of the bags and throws it in the microwave. Rob finally wakes up to see Leon scarfing down his noodles at the table.

"Morning." Leon says as Rob sits on the other side of the table.

"Morning." he says while yawning.

"So have you decided what your gonna do? Leon says.

"Yeah, I think me and Rachel are gonna head over to our houses to find our families and see if there okay. What about you?"

"For now I've decided to stay here for a while. I've got food and water and it's relatively safe for now."

Pretty soon Beth and Rachel wake up and Rob starts packing up some food and water for the journey. It should only take them a day at most to make it to where their houses are.

As Rachel and Rob are getting ready to leave Beth says she wants to stay with Leon as she doesn't have any reason to leave.

"It's better if you go with them for now, they'll need all the help they can get to reach their destination."

She's reluctant at first but finally gives in and joins the others. Soon they've made it outside and begin travelling down the road opposite of where they came from yesterday.

"Now it's time to farm." Leon says to himself as he makes his way back to where they fought the zombies yesterday. Once there he sees that these zombies dropped the same thing as the first ones. There's a core for every zombie they killed. There's 15 cores once he collected them all.

It seems items must be pretty rare considering none of the zombies dropped any this time. He continues back into the store where he packs up a couple of bags worth of food and drinks.

Since this store might get looted clean pretty soon he figured he would take as much as he can back to his apartment. After spending a couple of hours making trips back and forth he managed to fill a good portion of his apartment up with bags of food.

Leon also managed to kill a few more stragglers that stumbled into his area. It's already getting dark outside and Leon is calling it a day. He gets some hotdogs from his stash and sits at the table.

"I wonder how the others are doing." Leon says to himself while he takes another bite. Hopefully they find their families alive. Leon takes his backpack and dumps all the cores he got onto the floor. There's around 22 marble sized cores.

A blue window pops up with the different stat choices. There's not much he knows about these stats but for now he figures he can put them all into intelligence. It will make his wolf stronger and that's currently his only protection in this new strange world.

He presses the plus next to intelligence until he runs out of cores and they all get absorbed inside him.