Realizations

"Rraaaaaagh!" 

"Quit your screaming!" Leo shouts at the undead in front him before bashing its head in with his crowbar. He's currently in the process of trying to clear the sixth floor of undead, but more than half of the undead he's faced so far have been the screaming and running type, which has been a bit of a struggle.

Attracted to all the noise, some of the zombies from lower floors have even started making their way up the stairs to seek prey, which has put Leo in somewhat of a tight position. Not wanting to get pinched in the hallway by the small group of undead behind him and the couple in front of him, he hastily throws his body into the door of the closest apartment. 

Crash!

The wooden door easily gives way under the force of Leo's body, the frame splintering open as he charges through it. "Oh come on..." Leo groans as he nimbly evades a nasty swipe from a zombie in front of him. Unluckily, when Leo smashed through the front door, he almost ran straight head first into an undead woman's grasp. 

If it wasn't for his quick reflexes, it would have surely been the end for him.

Swinging for a home run, his crowbar whistles through the air before impacting the woman's head with a resounding thunk. Without getting a moment to catch his breath, three more undead soon follow behind him into the apartment, snarling as they pile in through the doorway. 

As if he is the finest meal they've ever seen, the three hungry runners charge towards him with a terrifying ferocity. 

With eyes widening, Leo hastily sidesteps the leading zombie's charge and swings his crowbar across his body in a forehand strike, lethally impacting the second runner's head. Not even thinking about it, following up the forehand strike, Leo kicks the third zombie back and quickly spins around with his crowbar in a vicious backhand swing that connects with the first zombie's face, dropping him instantly. 

Turning back towards the zombie he kicked away, he has just enough time to powerfully slam his crowbar onto the top of its head, sending the raving beast tumbling to the ground.

"heh... heh... heh... holy shit," Leo huffs, his chest rising and falling in an erratic pace as adrenaline surges through his body. Hearing more undead in the hallway, he doesn't have to wait too long before a couple stragglers shamble into the room, nearly falling over the corpses in front of the doorway. Taking out his knife, he smoothly and decisively executes both walkers by plunging his blade into their skulls. 

"That was way too close for comfort." He mutters passionately, cautiously peeking his head out into the hallway. Seeing no other undead in sight, Leo allows himself to close his eyes and try to regulate his breathing. 

He considers himself lucky that not all of the undead were runners, or he may have very well been screwed. After using his crowbar to breach the apartment across the hall of his temporary abode, the loud noise attracted numerous undead to his position, and those undead attracted even more undead, spiraling the situation out of control from there.

It wasn't all bad though, Leo managed to survive the stress-inducing ordeal with no injuries after all. 

Now that he wasn't in immediate danger of being eaten alive, Leo is finally able to check his notifications without fear. During the whole encounter, Leo had dismissed all notifications so that they wouldn't distract him.

"Alright let's see what we have here…" He trails off, pulling up his 'battle' rewards.

[+3 Exp x10]

[+1 Level in Bladed Weapons]

[+2 Levels in Melee Weapons]

"Not bad not bad," Leo says appreciatively, wiping a little bit of sweat off of his forehead. His skills are progressing nicely and he's already three quarters of the way to level four. At the rate he's going, he'll level up in no time.

Feeling as though the sixth floor will be better to loot once all of the undead are dealt with, as he wouldn't have to worry about getting attacked with his back turned, Leo returns to the hall. The hallway is dark, but far from quiet. Due to all the commotion, he can hear banging and scratching coming from numerous closed doors lining the corridor. 

Taking his time so as not to get caught in a similar situation as before, Leo begins to open the doors one at a time, slowly moving from apartment to apartment. Since the halls are pretty narrow and most of the zombies were directly behind the closed doors, he couldn't use his crowbar too efficiently, so Leo ends up using his knife a majority of the time. 

Clearing the sixth and fifth floors didn't take too long, it isn't too big of a building so there are only a handful of apartments to check out per floor. That being said, not every door had a zombie behind it, nor was there always one at a time whenever there happened to be a threat. 

Occasionally, Leo would have to take out two or three at a time, quickly leveling his Bladed Weapons skill, giving him plenty of combat experience. 

Because he made so much noise back up on the top floor, the hallway down on the fifth was empty. Not wanting to attract all of the undead from the lower floors as well, Leo was also able to level up his Sneaking while attempting to break open some of the locked doors. 

Just as he's finishing up the last of the undead on the fifth floor, Leo receives a notification that he's been waiting for over the last two days. 

[Level Up! +5 stat points awarded]

Seeing the level up notification, Leo allows a grin to grace his features. He would have leveled up a day earlier, but he's been holed up in 'his' apartment for the last couple days keeping an eye on the Grizzlies. 

A useful piece of information that he's been able to gather from watching over the Grizzlies is unsurprisingly, that blue truck of theirs isn't the only vehicle they have. It's mainly kept in the garage of the police station and hardly ever used, but they have an armored Humvee of some sort as well. He presumes that the Humvee wasn't used often because of the fuel consumption, but it'd make hell of a getaway vehicle for them if it is ever needed. 

Not only did Leo get a better understanding of the group's capabilities, but he is also able to identify at least fifteen different members of their group over the last two days. A majority of the Grizzlies would be at their base at any given time, usually around ten to eleven, while the rest would go on scavenging missions in that blue truck of theirs. It seems that the scavenging run was a detail dealt out to those who end up on the leader's shit list. 

Leo has only seen the leader one time since he's been camped out in the apartment building, but during the single time that he did see her, he now has an understanding why she is the one in charge. 

Yesterday, Leo was looking out over their compound when two men started arguing out front. The argument eventually progressed, leading to guns being drawn. Leo thought shots were about to soon break out, but before that happened, an older woman with short black hair in a police uniform stomped her way out of the courthouse towards them. 

He was too far away to hear what was being said, but she looked furious at one of the two men. Before he realized what was happening, the woman began to absolutely beat the hell out of the one that first pulled his weapon. 

The man tried to fight back, but he couldn't land a single hit on her. Like a professional boxer, she ducked and weaved around his punches before quickly dropping him with a heavy right hook. Although Leo couldn't see the details, he could see the man's face turning bloody on the ground as she got on top of him to continue her assault.

Just as Leo thought that she would beat the troublemaker to death, she got up and motioned for the other man to take him inside. The following morning, Leo witnessed both men walk towards the blue truck with dejected gaits. 

Overall, the group seems very organized with a clear chain of command. He isn't sure if all of them were police officers prior to the infection. He doesn't even know if that woman is a cop and just likes wearing the uniform. But, a majority of them definitely show a sense of discipline rarely seen in civilians. 

Then again, the apocalypse changes people in drastic ways.

Other than spending his time watching the Grizzlies, Leo has been practicing his drawing skills often. No longer is he merely drawing stick figures. Instead, he has been attempting to draw the horizon and sketch different sights that he can see from his elevated view. 

Once his Drawing skill reached level five, Leo became confident enough in his abilities to try making a rough map of the areas that he's explored so far. To his surprise, he got a whole new skill once he finished drawing the path from the campsite where he started, all the way to the apartment building: Cartography. 

Cartography is a very, very useful skill to have. Not only did it help him with creating maps, but it helps him with navigating them as well. 

Not wanting to get caught standing in the middle of the hallway, Leo enters a nearby apartment before pulling up his stats.

[Name: Leo Hopkins (Age 20)

Title: None

Level: 4

Exp: 2/2500

Strength: 7

Intelligence: 7 

Perception: 8

Endurance: 6

Charisma:7

Dexterity: 7

Agility: 7

—

Stat Points: 5

Skills: Melee Weapons (level 8/25)

Trapping (Level 3/30)

Bladed Weapons (Level 6/25)

Sneaking (4/30)

Drawing (5/20)

Cartography (2/20)

Perks: None]

Noticing how much Exp he needs to level up to the next level, Leo's eyes widened in astonishment. "What an increase…" He utters lowly with surprise, quite taken aback at the requirement jump. 

The stat points that he has available seem like they'll be the only ones he'll get for a while, unless more quests pop up. If Leo only gets Exp from taking out zombies, he will have to kill over eight hundred to get to level five. "Ok, time to be smart about this."

Not wanting to waste his stat points, he begins to think about what will be best for his survival. 

At the moment, Leo has a pretty balanced build going. Mentally, he doesn't feel that he is in dire need for any real improvement so soon. His perception is quite high and his intelligence is already above average, so spending points on his mental attributes isn't necessarily top priority.

Similar to his first level up, Leo still feels that his physical attributes will be the most beneficial in the long run. He understands the benefit of having higher intelligence in certain scenarios but thinks that he'd end up overthinking things, which would ultimately lead to hesitation.

For the near future, his main means of attack depend on his physical abilities. Unless he suddenly finds a bunch of ammunition or even a new firearm, the crowbar and knife are his go-to. 

Deciding to just bite the bullet, Leo puts one point into endurance, two points into strength, one point into dexterity, and the last point into agility. 

Dismissing the stats screen, he clenches and unclenches his fists to admire his new found strength. Cracking his neck, Leo begins to stretch out his limbs. He feels brand new. Leo thought that because his strength is so high that he'd be bulky, but it seems that his muscles just got denser. They felt like coiled springs underneath his skin.

There is no doubt in his mind that if he were to swing at an undead using his crowbar with all his strength, their head would be absolutely destroyed. With new motivation and a sense of confidence he didn't have before, Leo steps out of the apartment in search of targets to test his new abilities on. 

The fourth floor is relatively empty compared to the previous floors, but he's able to easily dispatch any undead that he encounters and moves quickly to the third floor. Here, because of Leo's hubris, he is nearly overrun by another group of runners. 

Just like before, a small mob of undead came up from lower floors. After kicking a door in, he alerted one of the zombies on the nearby stairs to his presence; and like a car alarm, they alerted others. 

Thwack! 

Leo grunts as his crowbar impacts a man in the face, completely shattering his teeth, tearing through the man's jaw muscles and bone before smacking directly into his spinal column. If he hit the zombie with any more force, Leo wouldn't have been surprised if he managed to decapitate the poor guy. 

With only having a little time to back up a few steps with every swing, Leo manages to keep distance between himself and the hungry beasts in front of him. 

He had prioritized the runners once the mob first showed itself at the top of the staircase, so luckily all he has to deal with at the moment is a good sized group of shamblers. Because the hallway is so narrow, he is very tempted to use his knife. However, he has just enough room to swing his crowbar and he feels that if he uses his knife in this situation, the group will very easily overwhelm him.

Slowly but surely, Leo manages to whittle down the group's numbers to only a few. With every strike, one of the dead would fall under the power of his swing. Before long, the corridor was covered with bodies. 

Leo had backed all the way up to the fifth floor by the time the last zombie in sight finally fell. 

Taking deep steadying breaths, Leo closes his eyes and trains his ears for any more movement. 

Drip… Drip… Drip… 

Blood slowly falls from his crowbar as it hung against his side heavily. This is the first time that he's killed so many zombies at once. As much as he wants to believe he was laying them to rest and putting them out of their misery, he still feels like a monster. 

Opening his eyes, Leo releases a heavy sigh as he sweeps his gaze over the many corpses in front of him. 'These were people, once.' He thinks morosely, looking down at the body closest to him. Shaking his head in sadness, Leo turns and slowly makes his way back to his apartment.

'But not any more…'