Progressing further into the police station, the zombies began to change from regular citizens to ones in uniform. Merlin was sure that almost 90% of the police force in this station had been infected. Maybe a handful of people may still be alive.
"I need to get there faster!"
Merlin was completely focused on murdering zombies as he massacred his way to the rooms at the end of the police station. There were three rooms, each with gunfire sounds. However, one of them had two firing sounds. Merlin instantly chose to enter this room since he devised that there would be two or more survivors. However the scene before him was startling.
There were a few dozen corpses, almost covering the entire floor of the small room. Some of them were still moving, and Merlin smashed their heads in by stepping on the zombies. What he say ahead him was six people, two of them police officers, while the rest were citizens. The two police officers were panting with tired expressions, as the last zombie fell. However the other four men were perfectly fine. In a better state than normal. Unmasked smiles of disdain were clear on their faces.
Looking closer, Merlin noticed a blue icon on top of one of the citizen's heads. He realised that this was a tutorial player as well and instantly became more cautious. Since they had yet to notice him, he ducked down, below the pile of corpses and waited to see how the events would unfold. He needed to see the attitude of the people before bringing them into his group.
As he looked closer, Merlin noticed that the police officers had no lethal weapons with them, besides riot shields, while the 4 others were holding the guns, still smoking from the shots fired. From this, Merlin inferred that the four had either asked to help or forced the policemen into this situation. Since he wasn't sure, Merlin decided to leave this room as is and let things progress some more before he decided to take any action.
Silently leaving the room, Merlin crawled out and carefully entered another room. Here he saw that there were no players and there were 5 policemen holding riot shields and holding back around 10 zombies. Their weapons weren't drawn, but they could shoot either. This was because they were using all their might to hold back the zombies.
Seeing no player in sight, Merlin rushed in and beheaded 2 zombies with one strike. By this point, his strength was nearly at the peak of level 2, with almost all his stats nearing the 20 point mark. Soul was the only deficient part, snice every-time he tried to increase the soul stat, there would be an alert.
=============================
Alert
Soul cannot be influenced until the end of the tutorial period
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And so he decided to simply hold onto the stat points he had initially planned on using for soul, until the tutorial ended.
Within minutes, the entire 10 zombies were taken care of and the policemen fell down onto the floor, clearly exhausted from the brawl. Merlin took pity on them and decided to allow them to follow him. He also knew that people who could shoot was better than normal people in phase 1.
"Alright, anyone wanting to follow me come with me, the rest can go and f*ck off"
7 years in the Apocalypse would naturally change a person. This was already Merlin being extremely polite to a stranger.
Hearing this, the officers were slightly confused about the awkward situation.
"I'll join you"
It was Sean. He was a rookie who had joined the police force only 2 years ago, but everyone still considered him a rookie. He had seen many horror movies, and the person before him had the aura of a protagonist. In addition, the speed at which he decapitated the zombies was frightening. If he didn't follow him, he would only be stupid. Also, he didn't have much more to lose, he only had his sister a few years ago, who had died of cancer, and now was alone. If he could live a little longer, why wouldn't he?
"What is your name?"
"S-Sean"
"Ok, you will be my second in command. Anyone else willing to join come now. The rest can get the f*ck away from me."
With the first decision made by Sean, the rest of the people also joined in like sheep. With this complete, Merlin told them to wait in this room while he dealt with the rest of the zombies outside. He also told them to shoot at anyone else who enters, be it kids or elderly.
Entering the second room, Merlin found one single surviving officer, who was collapsed on the ground. Merlin stared at her for a few minutes, trying to remember why that face was familiar, before recalling
"Alice?"