A rare nucleus

Without their hands, the trio only knew a few ways to fight, and they decided to chose the one they were most familiar with, which was pouncing towards their target and biting them to death.

But James had been expecting these fools to do something like this.

Just as they lunged towards him, James jumped up with just enough force to dodge out of the trajectory of the path they have taken due to their lunge in time but not whack his head against the ceiling of the corridor. The nightmares passed by from underneath him as he jumped over them.

As soon as gravity brought him down and he planted his feet back on the floor, he turned around and, with all the strength he could muster, he tossed his daggers towards the nightmares who, after lunging, had their backs to him.

Whoosh!

The daggers whizzed through the air like swift arrows and in a flash plunged into the backs of two nightmares' heads, ending their miserable lives. Like all the nightmares James had slain before them, they too collapsed to the ground, laying there motionlessly.

"You are the only one left. Come here and face death."

As he taunted the last nightmare, James waved his hand provocatively, beckoning it to come closer.

If he was facing any other monster, they would have realized by now, after losing their entire group, that James was someone they should not dare to tackle alone, or else all they would get for foolishly charging at him would be death.

But the Nightmare he was facing was a special case. It just had enough intelligence to put up an act to fool unsuspecting newbies in the Land of Trials. It didn't have the intelligence necessary to detect danger or the instinct to run away from it.

All of its movements were driven by its craving for the blood and flesh of the living, and James was the only living being in sight, so naturally it sprinted towards him with saliva dripping out of its wide-opened and stinky mouth.

James also charged towards it, keenly aware that the buff that doubled his agility would wear off in 3 seconds. He had to end the battle before the buff expired. Otherwise, it would become considerably more challenging for him to handle the handless nightmare. After all, he couldn't reapply the buff almost immediately after it ended—the spell Haste had a 30-second cooldown.

When the two got close to each other, the expected clash didn't occur.

James simply rushed past the nightmare with such impressive speed that it didn't even get the chance to bite him. Then, he retrieved his daggers from the corpse of the nightmares sprawled on the floor. It was one of the two nightmares he had killed seconds ago by tossing his daggers.

[Warning: Your Buff will wear off in 1 second]

'Time to end this.' 

In a swift, fluid motion that seemed almost choreographed, James turned around and tossed the dagger towards the nightmare with the strength of his entire body, like a professional pitcher in a baseball match aiming to destroy any chance his opposition had at having a future family due to some sort of twisted personal vendetta. 

Just then, his buff ended, and the haste spell entered a 30 seconds cooldown. He would be able to use it again only after half a minute pass.

Whoosh!

The dagger barreled through the air so swiftly it pierced the nightmare's skull in a flash. In that very moment, any hint of intelligence in its eyes was extinguished.

It didn't crumble to the ground until James walked up to it and pulled the dagger, with only its hilt sticking out, out of its head.

James looked to his left and then to his right.

Despite the absence of light, the goggles of his special helmet allowed him to clearly see up to 60 feet ahead. Within that distance, he couldn't see a single monster.

"It's safe for now. I can get to collecting the spoils of the challenging battle," James thought as he started to slice open the heads of the five nightmares he had just slain to collect their nuclei.

Each head was sliced open and their nucleus was extracted.

He didn't expect his action to yield any impressive results. However, his expectations were surpassed when he extracted a colorless nucleus from the head of one of the nightmares under the mercy of his blade.

It was shaped like a crystal but unlike one, it wasn't hard. Rather, it was soft and squishy like a stress relief ball.

At the sight of it, James broke out in a wide grin.

"This is the Virus Resistance Nucleus. I can't believe I got this when I have killed less than ten nightmares. I got damn lucky."

The Virus Resistance Nucleus was a rare item that increased one's resistance to the zombie virus. It's said that if a player gets lucky enough to absorb 20 of these, they would never have to worry about contracting the zombie virus as they would become immune to it. There was also a rumor that it could cure zombification, but it was just a rumor. James hadn't read about it being a cure to anything in the novel Tales of My Regression.

Its drop rate was one every hundred kills. James didn't expect to get one when he hadn't even killed ten nightmares. It was no wonder that he was so overjoyed.

He quickly pressed it against his forearm to absorb it.

A few notifications rang out in his mind.

[Virus Resistance Nucleus Absorbed]

[Gained +5% Resistance to the Zombie virus]

[Absorb 19 more such nuclei to develop Resistance into Immunity]

James rolled his eyes at the last notification from his system, 'Like that's something that will happen just because I want to.'