“Holy shit.” Stuck inside of a bank vault, Wu Xiaoming wiped his forehead with bloodied his left wrist. His entire right arm was trembling, and he gasped again from the sweat seeping into the wounds on his back and shoulders. He had killed - probably a dozen zombies at this point, at the cost of several wounds spread all across his body.
The horde of zombies pouring from almost every opening of the office building was definitely no joke. By his rough count, it was easily a few hundred strong, many of which were as strong as, if not stronger than the two mutated ones he had encountered in the hospital.
He had fought and run, but to no avail. Finally he locked himself in this bank vault, with basically no way of getting out. Tingling numbness spread from his wounds to the surrounding tissues and even his organs - he might have been infected already. So, he made the simple decision: quit.
As he made the decision in his mind and sent his “request” into the limbo itself, his surroundings blurred and flashed. The next moment, he found himself standing in front of the same shop where he would find the zombie mask. In the frame of the door, was a dark purple energy vortex. He hovered his right hand at the vortex, and a simple question popped up in his mind - it was not laid out in words, but the meaning and intention were pretty obvious: if he would like to enter the zombie limbo again, he would need to pay 2000 Spirit Fragments of “entry fee”.
Speaking of which, he opened up his panels.
Current Currencies: 36021 Spirit Fragments, 182 Vision Slivers. He lost around 500 Spirit Fragments, but earned 10 Vision Slivers, all in all seemed like a good deal. There was no new item in his inventory, the handheld radio was not brought out with him.
Wu Xiaoming scratched his jaw, then frowned at the energy vortex: “Still a bit expensive, and it’s not even finished though!”
It was probably something to check out for another day. The main thing that lingered on his mind was still the reason behind this strange change. So far, his theory that the negative energy spreading to the surrounding area seemed to be accurate.
He ran towards the position of the house of the Emerson family. The place was further away from the Sproutlinger Hotel, and it would be somewhat worrisome if he found any change there.
He slowed down when he ran by the same bank building he had gone in before. Going in right now blind did not seem like the best idea, so he just looked up at the windows.
He almost jumped and hid behind a wall. Hundreds of human-shaped shadows were standing near the windows, some were scratching the glass windows in front of them, some were simply looking down, staring at him. The windows were not completely transparent, and from where he was standing it was unclear what those shadows were - be it humanoid creatures, or spirits, or cardboard cutouts. But one thing they had in common was that their eyes were glowing.
But at least right now, these shadows were not able to come at him from where they were. So Wu Xiaoming just picked up his speed and continued running towards the house.
The streets were still empty, not much had changed as far as he could tell. Before long, he stood before the burned down house.
From the physical exterior, not much had changed. But when he focused on the house, or to be precise, the space where the house inhabited and its “aura”, it became clear to him that it was shrouded by some kind of gray mist or fog, with some dark green spots flashing in the air around the house.
He frowned, pulled out his Sturdy Soapberry Staff of Heft and Resolve, and his Tempered Steel Baton - his two most trusted weapons.
“Sturdy Soapberry Staff of Heft and Resolve: short staff made from carefully chosen and pressure treated soapberry wood. Carefully polished, sanded and stained, thus the full potential of the material and the power of the ritual that enchanted it was fully realized. Infused with the undying, unyielding will of a mortal man. Grants Fortitude. Grants Fury. Grows with evil vanquished.”
“Tempered Steel Baton: made of high quality steel, it served longer than most expected. Anger, rage and aggression makes it much more effective.”
Before he would even enter the door, his surrounding environment flashed again. When everything cleared up, he found himself in a village. And not the kind of Chinese village he knew, but a village with huts entirely built with wood and had distinct sharply pitched gable roofs. Maybe something Nordic or Slavic - he couldn’t tell. The entire village was surrounded by wooden fences, but most of which were either torn or burned down.
He approached one of the houses that were still standing. A deep, long claw mark with four gashes was on the wall, through which he could peek inside of the house. On the edge of the gashes sprinkled small dust and tiny pieces of dried leaves or tree bark.
Wu Xiaoming scooped a bit of the dust up and took a sniff - no distinct smell, just what one would expect from dust and dried leaves. He fixed his eyes on the gashes while pushing his ability to see unclean energy - there was no obvious trace of any sort of supernatural energy left.
He had done some research on tree monsters preying on children - worries about getting on some watchlist aside, there were just too many of them in different folklore and myths. The most impressive one was probably a creature from the Slavic folklore called a Leshy, but there was no mention of it hiding inside a child’s doll. There were of course always different tree Yao Guai/demons from Chinese folklore, and similar Yokais from Japanese folklore. But he just simply could not be certain which it was - this was Hollywood, or to be more up to date, Haoliwood, an item with supernatural properties could have come from anywhere in the world.
Though, from the looks of the houses, he was rather confident this was not a Chinese village - at least to his knowledge.
He walked around this house in front of him. On its side, laid a torn round shield, with blood splashed all over. The shield itself was made of wood with a metal rim and one metal center piece. He picked it up, and found a broken hand still holding onto the handle behind it.
“Hmm.” He tried to pry the fingers open to let the shield go, but they were already stiff and cold, as if they were made of stones. He flipped the shield over and rotated the hand slightly along the handle - on the back of the broken hand, was a tattoo of some kind of symbol - not a symbol he recognized, but looked rather familiar. He took a few seconds to memorize what it looked like before setting it down. The crack had reached the other side anyway, he had no use for it.
He looked around - if there was a shield here, then probably there would be a sword or a spear around. Even if it could be unusable, it would at least help him identify this village. There was nothing, he even looked into the house through one of the windows, the house was a mess, and it seemed a fight might have broken out in there, though there was no blood.
He went around and checked the neighboring house. It was gradually falling apart right in front of his eyes. There were at least five similar claw marks on its wall, and all of them were contributing to the gradual crumbling of the structure.
Wu Xiaoming took a quick peek through the window - it was similar to the last one: everything was a mess but no blood.
One concern arose in his mind - these houses, though different in sizes, all seemed enough for families with children, so, did he need to go in and check all of them for children’s toys? It would be quite a drag.
He sensed the world around him, and before long, the answer he sought came to him - if he wanted to, he could get out, but at the cost of a chunk of his Spirit Fragments, and he needed to actually fight the limbo itself to weaken its grip on him.
How big of a chunk would it be - he had no idea. But it did not feel like it would be a lot. Maybe he could explore a little before he would exit - no reason to waste his currencies like this.
After some thought, one decision was made - he could just check the general area throughout, and if he found nothing, he would go in each standing house to look for children’s toys. In the “normal version” of the limbo, the furnace would eventually explode and force the creature out, maybe, there would be a similar “timing mechanism” here.