Chapter 4

  Jake watched the zombie run toward the window. It moved amazingly fast for an undead being. Though it robably too early to call it a zombie. He had no idea what happeo the world and what the people who had lost the game of ce had been turned into.

  As the creature got closer to the window, he made out more details. Its skin was very pale, its fingers ended in long curved talons, and its huge mouth was filled with sharp teeth resembling those of a shark’s. So a mutant robably a better term for that creature than a zombie.

  The sight of the frightening creature seemed to paralyze Jake with horror as he watched the mutant reach the building. Only when the scary monster bumped against the window pane did Jake e into motion. As he stumbled back clumsily, his feet tangled up with each other. Losing his bance, Jake colpsed to the dust-covered floor. He rose on his elbows just as the mutant us body at the window again. It shook in its frame but held. It seemed to make the mutant even angrier. It let go with a terrifying scream before assaulting the window once more. A spider web of cracks appeared on the gss, and wheant us body against the window aime, it finally shattered.

  Jake raised his arms to protect his head against the shards raining down on him. He expected the mutant to grab hold of him and tear into his body with its nasty cws and razor-sharp teeth. However, when he looked up, he saw that the mutant’s hands were g at the air just a few inches in front of his face. The monster was draped over the window frame—its upper body was ihe room, but its legs were still outside. Some of the gss pieces that remained protruding from the frame must have pierced its flesh, trapping the monster ihe mutant’s arms filed before Jake but couldn’t quite reach him. Its huge jaws ccked audibly as the monster opened and closed its deformed mouth repeatedly.

  For a moment, Jake was too terrified to move. Then his instinct for self-preservation finally kicked in, and he crab-crawled back away from the window, in which the mutant got stuck. A couple of seds ter, he reached the other side of the room, bumping against the wall. The moill couldn’t detach itself from the window frame—the gss fragments remaining in the frame must have stabbed deeply into its body, holding it fast ihe dreadful creature kept swinging its cwed hands in the air as it emitted screeg sounds from its throat.

  Jake watched the creature fil its limbs, too terrified to move. The mutant had definitely been human once, but there was little resembo an actual human being about it now. Its skin was deathly pale. The mouth was so wide its ers almost reached the ears. The creature kept snapping its jaws repeatedly, opening its maw impossibly wide, revealing two rows of razor-sharp teeth, before abruptly shutting it with loud ccks. As for the mutant’s eyes, there was not a trace of an intelligent thought behind them. All Jake could see in them rimal rage.

  The mutahrashing around i couldn’t free itself. Every time it jerked its body, the gss shards that had pierced its body speared deeper into its torso, slig open its flesh. Giving o it, the mutant tio thrash around without realizing that by doing so, it wasn’t aplishing anything but only making its situation worse. The mutant was bleeding profusely, and as it grew weaker, all its movements became more and more sluggish.

  A couple of mier, the mutant finally went still, its body draped over the windowsill, its hands dangling down, reag the floor with the tips of its cw-like fingers. Jake kept staring at the now motionless mutant, not quite believing that it was dead. At that moment, his PDA emitted some kind of notification sound, and Jake suddenly realized he no longer had the devi him—he must have dropped it wheant bumped against the window, causing him to stumble ba fear and fall. He quickly sed the room, searg for the device. He spotted it lying on the floor just beh the mutant’s upper body dangling down from the window.

  Jake got to his feet. His eyes never leaving the seemingly dead mutant, he sloroached it. The closer he got to the dead body, the slower he moved. He half-expected the mutant to suddenly spring to life and lu him with its cwed hands, as ofteed in horror movies. To his relief, the creature remaiill. Jake retrieved the devid quickly made his way back to the other side of the room, putting as much distance as possible between himself and the dead mutant.

  Whe back to the other side of the room, he looked at the s of his PDA and saiece of text in the ter of the s – THANK YOU FOR YOUR PATIEHE DEVICE HAS FINISHED SING YOU, AND YOU FREELY USE YOUR PDA NOW. THE DEVICE IS STANTLY ECTED TO THE SYSTEM, SO ANY PROGRESS YOU MAKE WILL IMMEDIATELY BE SAVED AS A BACKUP IN THE SYSTEM’S DATABASE.

  Jake read the message and dismissed it with a tap. The device ran on an unfamiliar operating system, but he quickly got the hang of it. There were several tabs along the bottom of the s. Wheapped the first one, a piece of general info filled the s. Name: Jake Turner. Level: 1. Race: Human. Mana: 0. XP: 0/100.

  Huh? What the hell does it mean? Jake thought. Has the world really been turned into a video game?

  It was stra not overly so. After everything he’d retly experienced, it wasn’t easy to surprise Jake anymore. He tapped the ab, and his attributes appeared on the s. Strength: 7. stitution: 6. Agility: 8. Perception: 12. Intelligence: 9. Magicka: 1. Luck: 15.

  Jake was surprised to see that his Luck was the highest. He’d never felt particurly lucky in his life—it was quite the opposite in fact. Life had always been difficult for him. However, a memory stirred within him. He’d won the game of ce against the System even though his oppo had a huge advantage over him. So yeah, maybe he was a tiny bit lucky every now and then after all.

  He switched to the ab. It tained lots of miseous skills such as Walking, Running, Climbing, , Thinking, Programming, Driving, and whatnot. Each of these skills had a numerical value representing the current level of the skill. The list retty long, and it took him some time to scroll to the bottom. He noticed that some of his skills had zeros o them. For example, Swimming, which wasn’t surprising to him, sidering he’d never learo swim.

  The list included numerous bat skills too, but most of them were level 0 as well. His Pistols skill was at 15, though. Having visited shooting ranges in the past and tried his hand at various firearms, mostly for leisure rather than practical purposes, he had some experieh pistols. With other kinds of ons, not so much.

  The remaining tabs appeared locked, yielding no response when Jake tapped on them. He figured they would unlock when the right time came. The st tab that was avaible tained what looked like a camera application. He ope, and the feed from the outer camera filled up the s. Positio the bottom edge was a round button with the word S inscribed within it.

  Jake poihe PDA’s camera at the dead body draped over the window frame and tapped the button. On the s appeared the text: DEAD EX-HUMAN MUTAY. TIP: IF YOU WANT TO LEARN MORE ABOUT THIS TYPE OF MUTANT, S A LIVING SPE.

  He dismissed the message and then pahe camera around the room, hoping to glean some valuable information or maybe find something of use. However, the app didn’t provide him with any information on his surroundings at all.

  Jake deactivated the sing app and stowed the PDA in his jacket pocket. He looked around one more time to make sure he didn’t miss anything and thehe room to explore the rest of the house.