Gabriel
"Well hello there Gabriel, I would like to know how you manage to do magic" said Marcus with a sweet voice out of his dead and dried up mouth.
Gabriel still sitting on his bum, looked at surprised at the zombie lord.
<I never I thought that this monster, would be able to do magic> thought Gabriel as he continued to look into the abyss of Marcus's eye.
"What if I say no?" asked Gabriel hesitantly, a drop of sweat gliding down the side of his face.
"Well I'll just torture you" replied Marcus, outstretching his boney finger to Gabriel arms, slowly moving down to his legs.
"First, I'll slowly snap every bone in your arms and legs" continued Marcus.
"Then, all ripped your skin off piece by piece, and then I'll eat you alive and make you into a zombie. I want to see what kind of zombie you would be, since you can you magic" said Marcus slowly retreating his finger to scratch his chin, as he thought about if he would become a new type of zombie, since he could use magic.
Gabriel gulped as Marcus describe how he would torture him and experiment on him.
".....OK I'll teach you some magic" said Gabriel as he reluctantly agreed to help, the greatest enemy of humanity get stronger.
Marcus looked at the man with his eye-less skull, before sitting down cross legged in front of Gabriel.
His pervious evil look was now replaced by an excited face, like a child about to learn a new word.
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Gabriel went onto explain how he gathered the mana around his body to his brain, and how spells worked.
Spells consists of two parts; The spell core, the shell.
The spell core is made by the spell caster in their brain, the spell carter's mana is more concentrated, it serves as the foundation for the spell. It holds the majority of the power of the spell, and contain the information of the spell. The information includes the maximum threshold of surrounding mana it can hold at one time.
The shell is used as a medium so that the spell core can be transported to the target, by stopping it from assimilating into the surrounding mana of the world, by fusing the surrounding mana with the spell carter's own mana to shield the spell core.
The spell core is formed by increasing the amount of collision between each mana particle, to turn mana into the element he was most inclined to being fire, and condensing it into a small sphere
The foundation of the spell being the limiting factor, so the spell could only form with a predetermined size, for example a fireball could only have a predetermined diameter of 40cm. If the threshold was exceeded the spell would become unstable and self destruct.
"Thank you for your explanation Gabriel" said Marcus as he stood up to tower over Gabriel, with a sense of enlightenment.
[Conditions for Mana Manipulati....]
"Your welcome Mr. Zombie Lord" replied Gabriel with politeness, but putting up a facade to hide his boiling anger at Marcus and himself.
Marcus froze midway as he processed Gabriel's words, complete missing what HECATE was saying.
"How did you know I was the Zombie Lord?" asked Marcus with curiousness.
"Well before the zombies showed up, a loud robotic voice was heard all over the world, talking about something called the 'Great Filter' and that it was a 'Test of the universe' that we need to pass, to survive" explained Gabriel with smile, hoping to atleast save himself, by getting on the good side of Marcus.
"And that to pass this 'test' was to kill the Zombie Lord, and the rest of the zombies would die with it" continued Gabriel as Marcus scratched his chin, as he listened closely to Gabriel's explanation.
<Do you know what that voice was HECATE?> asked Marcus.
[That announcement was broadcasted by me] answered HECATE with their usually emotionless voice.
<Why the fuck would you do that?> asked Marcus, who was stumped as to why his own system would tell the world of his existence and how to pass the test.
[This is done to slightly even the field, so that the native species of the planet would atleast know what to aim for and prepare for the world-ender's] explained HECATE.
Gabriel who was still looking up to Marcus, was waiting for him to say something after not talking for a minute.
"Uhhmm....Are you ok?" asked Gabriel softly as not to upset the monster in front of him.
Marcus turned his head towards Gabriel as he spoke, locking eyes with him, before opening his mouth to speak.
"Yes I'm ok, but I want you to come along with me to teach me all you know about magic" said Marcus, as he inched closer to Gabriel's right ear.
"But remember if you try anything, I'll eat you alive you get that, nod your head if you understand" whispered Marcus 8nto Gabriel's ear.
Gabriel started to furiously nod his head, beads of sweat flying off with each nod.
"Ok now pack up everything useful into a bag and comeback here" said Marcus as he turned his back to Gabriel, to go to the front door.
"Chop chop, we don't have all day" said Marcus clapping as he looked back to see Gabriel still sitting on his ass.
Gabriel packed all the canned food, bottled water, and other necessities into a camping bag. Meeting Marcus at the front door of the house wearing a ragged robe to cover his body, silently looking into a space in front of him.
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<HECATE show me my stats please> asked Marcus expecting that he was going to get a massive boost.
=================
Name: Marcus White
Race: Zombie Noble
Title(s): Zombie Lord (max)
Level: 6 (NEW!)
EXP: 190/300
Health: ∞
Mana: 0/1000 (NEW!)
Strength: 24 (NEW!)
Stamina: ∞
Agility: 15 (NEW!)
Defence: 27 (NEW!)
Skills: Horde(Level 1), True voice (Level 1), Mana manipulation III (NEW!), Domain of the Zombie Lord (Level 1), Regeneration (Level 1) (NEW!), Bite (Level 2) (NEW!)
Credits: 999 (NEW!)
Condition: Mana Starved/Hunger (CRITICAL!)
=======================
<Oh! I leveled 4 times, and my defence stats massively increased, and what is this condition?>
<Mana starved?> said Marcus as he read off the status.
Suddenly, Marcus's became very blury, his head pounding painfully, stumbling backwards.
"What the f̷͕͔̮̬̎̓͊͘̚ͅu̸͍̠̩̦̮̅́̐̓̍̏͋̈̕͜k̷̯̺̼̥̬͍̘͑̿́́ ̵̢̳͚̗͖̘̼͊̄͜͝w̶̞̐̓̚ẑ̸̫̓̅̉̈́w̸̟͙̭͙̠̥͗̏̃́̓̅̇̚ ̶̛͔͉̀̓͋̌̂͝r̷̭͕̻̳̲͉̬͎͌̔̈͜z̸̛̜͉͓͎͙̭̲͋́̈́͒̀̈́̕͘ͅa̷͈͈̜͂̃̂̀̄̈́͘t̵͉̼̳̘́̈́͊̽͑͊͝ ̶̥̓̀́͝" slurred Marcus as he grabbed his pounding head.
_______________________
Gabriel watched as Marcus suddenly grabbed his head and walked backwards.
"Are you ok?" asked Gabriel meekly, as he looked at Marcus.
"URAGAHHHHHH" screamed Marcus, with a painful expression visible on his face. His dried face scrunched up, as tears of black blood streamed down his face from his eye holes. Marcus start to cover his face with his hands, continuing to scream in pain.
Gabriel start to put his guard, as he keep am eye on Marcus and walked backwards to get far away from him. Trying to not make any sound, as to not alert the screaming Marcus.
Suddenly, Marcus's stop screaming and just stood there, his arms limping at his side.
He jerked his head to Gabriel's direction, revealing his face to be covered in the black blood.
Gabriel start to run to the kitchen and close the door, before pushing anything he could find; the fridge, table, chairs, to reinforce the door.
Just as Gabriel threw the last chair at the door, Marcus's smashing his body against the door.
"KKKRAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHH" screamed Marcus's before rammed his shoulder against with more power, the arbitrary build barricade, collapsed beneath it own weight. A small dust forming from the wreckage.
Marcus's frail and weak-looking figure slowly emerging from the small dust, crouched down and keeping his guard up.
Gabriel who was now done chanting a magic spell, with his palm extended to the door.
A small flame exited the his palm, before it quickly condensed the surrounding mana to form its shape and size. The fireball flying at Marcus exploding in his face, the explosion echoing alerting the surrounding zombies.
"SHIT!" shouted Gabriel as he jumped through the window over the sink, smashing the glass.
Marcus finally recovered from the fireball to his face, and start to run towards the window, narrowly missing grabbing Gabriel's leg.
Gabriel tumbled out onto the pavement and started to sprint away from the house, with cuts and pieces of glass in his skin.
Blood dripping onto the cold concrete pavement, the smell of blood attract any nearby zombie.
"FUCK! WHY IS THIS HAPPENING TO ME!" shouted Gabriel as he continued, growls of zombie heard in the distance. His cry of frustration being his ultimate reason for his demise.
The rabid Marcus who had lost track was looking for clues to were Gabriel ran to, when a loud voice reverberated, immediately perking up Marcus's interest.
He ran toward the direction of the voice, with a wicked smile on his face, his prey had outed himself out. Marcus had turned the street corner where he thought the voice came from.
Just then a loud explosion went off, with a huge bright light, forcing Marcus to hide behind a house and cover his face.
After the bright light quickly subsided, Marcus ran out of hiding to find, a single man with his clothes singed surrounded by a few dozen charred zombies.
"Kill.....me" said Gabriel, as he struggled painfully to force open his lips which was melted together.
Marcus slowly walked towards the burned Gabriel.