Chapter 53 Awake Among a Mountain of Corpses-and Negative Status Effects?

Roughly six miles from the stranded convoy, Daryl and Merle Dixon sat shoulder to shoulder on the roof of a small roadside convenience store, conserving what little energy they had left. Their radio lay switched off beside their boots, and Daryl took a long drag from the last half-burned cigarette before handing it to his brother. Merle didn’t complain about sharing; his cracked lips closed around the filter, and two deep pulls finished what remained. “Think Magnus came looking for us and everybody back there started arguing about democracy again?” he whispered with a crooked grin.

Daryl kept his eyes closed and rested his crossbow against his chest. “Maybe they’re arguing right now,” Merle added when his brother ignored him, letting out a few dry laughs before Daryl finally opened one eye. “Would you shut the hell up?” Daryl muttered, keeping his voice low enough that it wouldn’t carry beyond the roof. Merle’s smile faded slightly, and for once there was no joke in his next question.

“You think Magnus would come save my ass again?”

Daryl’s mouth tightened.

He didn’t answer.

Their current situation made promises meaningless.

The morning sky above them had cleared into a pale blue, and weak sunlight was finally breaking through the clouds after the storm. If someone could have pulled back far enough to see the whole scene, the reason for their silence would have become obvious: Daryl and Merle were stranded atop the roof of a small 7-Eleven-style convenience store attached to a gas station, while an enormous mass of walkers wandered below them. Their motorcycles remained parked beside the fuel pumps only a short distance away, close enough to see but completely unreachable through the dense wall of corpses surrounding the building.

The brothers weren’t lost.

They were trapped.

Cold.

That was the first thing Magnus Vane felt.

One finger twitched against the stone floor, and for a confused moment he thought he was lying in shallow ice water. Morning sunlight slipped through a second-floor church window and crossed his face, causing his closed eyelids to flutter before slowly opening. The world remained a blur for several seconds, then gradually sharpened into blood-dark stone, broken furniture, and motionless bodies.

Magnus inhaled sharply.

A long breath left his mouth as visible white mist.

The bitter medicinal taste of Antibiotics still lingered in his throat, and with considerable effort he forced himself upright until his back rested against the cold stone wall. His broken right arm hung uselessly at his side, and the pain was somehow worse now that the Blood Moon frenzy and battle adrenaline had vanished. Magnus grimaced, waited for the dizziness to settle, and muttered, “Good thing nobody saw that. That was embarrassing as hell.”

Only then did he properly look around.

Walker corpses covered almost the entire second floor of the church.

They lay across one another in grotesque piles, filling the stairwell entrance, the landing, and much of the room where Magnus had made his last stand. Dried blood stained the walls and floor so heavily that the stone seemed darker than it had been the night before. Near the center of the corpse pile, his modified Stone Sledgehammer Quality 2 stood almost perfectly upright, its barbed head buried among bodies while the long handle pointed toward the ceiling.

Magnus stared at it.

Even he had to admit it looked ridiculous.

Like somebody had planted a monument in the middle of a battlefield.

He shook his head slowly, clearing away the final traces of the strange Blood Moon aggression still lingering in his thoughts. “How long was I out?” Magnus looked toward the window, watching morning sunlight creep farther across the floor while cool mist still clung to the countryside outside. Judging by his body, the lighting, and the level of dehydration, he suspected he had been unconscious for at least a full day and night.

“System.”

The translucent interface opened.

Magnus’s expression immediately changed.

[Magnus Vane]

[Level: Lv22]

[Available Skill Points: 7]

[Health: 119 / 122]

[Base Health: 100 | Level Bonus: +22]

[Stamina: 31 / 61 (Maximum 122) — Slowly Decreasing]

[Food: 7 / 122 — Slowly Decreasing]

[Water: 7 / 122 — Slowly Decreasing]

[Body Temperature: 60°F]

[Walkers Killed: 231]

[Magazine Skill: Bow Crafting Lv5]

[Strength: Lv8/10]

[Skull Crusher: Lv4/5]

[Heavy Weapon Handling: Lv1/3]

[Fortitude: Unlocked]

[Pain Tolerance: Lv1/5]

[Healing Factor: Lv1/5]

[Status Effect: Exhausted — You need rest]

[Status Effect: Hypothermia — Body temperature dangerously low]

[Status Effect: Fracture — Right arm unusable; Health slowly decreasing]

[Status Effect: Weakened — Maximum Stamina temporarily reduced]

[Status Effect: Thirsty — Severe dehydration will eventually reduce Health to zero]

Magnus stared at the list.

“Jesus.”

The battle had pushed him all the way from Level 15 to Level 22, which explained the seven available skill points, but the rewards were buried beneath enough negative status effects to make the achievement difficult to appreciate. 231 walkers killed meant the church battle had been far larger than he realized while fighting through it, especially once the ordinary walkers arrived after the Berserkers. Yet the moment his eyes landed on Food: 7 and Water: 7, every other thought vanished.

Magnus immediately closed the status screen and opened his system inventory.

Several of the system-generated ready-to-eat meals from the motel treasure room were still stored inside. Because items kept in the backpack didn’t spoil normally, the thin package was warm when he tore it open, and steam rose from the food as though it had just been prepared. Magnus didn’t even bother identifying what the meal was before grabbing the included spoon and shoveling food into his mouth.

He finished the first container rapidly.

Then opened another.

“Being unconscious slowed the drain, but it didn’t stop it,” Magnus thought while eating. Most of his stored Food and Water values must have been burned during the Blood Moon battle itself, when his body had been operating far beyond anything remotely normal. More importantly, Healing Factor Lv1 depended on having enough nutrition available to support regeneration, meaning the perk would have become almost useless if his Food value had reached zero.

The same was true of the Antibiotics he had swallowed just before blacking out.

Magnus looked toward the blood coating his body and understood how narrow the margin had really been. Pain Tolerance had kept shock from completely shutting him down, Healing Factor had supported recovery while he was unconscious, and the Antibiotics had protected him from infection while his wounds closed enough to keep his Health from reaching zero. Without those two desperate skill purchases at Level 20 and the handful of medicine he had forced down before passing out, he might never have opened his eyes again.

“Good call, dying me.”

Magnus kept eating.

Three system meals disappeared before he finally stopped.

His Food value climbed from 7 to 112, and enough liquid content accompanied the meals to stabilize his condition while he reached for additional water from storage. Color gradually returned to his face as the morning sun warmed the church, and the Hypothermia warning weakened until it finally disappeared. His heartbeat steadied, the shaking in his muscles lessened, and Healing Factor immediately had enough nutrition to work properly again.

The fractured arm remained the biggest problem.

Magnus pushed himself to his feet and carefully stepped across the sea of bodies, using his left hand to retrieve the Stone Sledgehammer from where it stood among the corpses. Even injured and exhausted, Strength Lv8 made carrying it one-handed possible, though every movement sent smaller waves of pain through the rest of his body. His gaze eventually settled on the wooden bed in what had once been the priest’s private quarters.

“That’ll work.”

Magnus approached the bed and raised the hammer with his left hand.

Bang!

The frame shattered.

He pulled apart several relatively straight pieces of wood, tore the bedsheet into strips, and searched the nearby drawers until he found a small roll of tape. Once the materials were gathered, he arranged them together and called on the system’s crafting function.

Cloth.

Wood.

Tape.

“All set.”

“Craft.”

A familiar sequence of artificial hammering and mechanical sounds played inside his head. Within seconds, the crude pile of scavenged materials disappeared and a completed Splint appeared around his injured right arm. It looked simple—two straight pieces of wood secured tightly around the fracture—but anything produced through the system operated far more effectively than its crude appearance suggested.

[Splint]

[Medical Item]

[Stabilizes fractures and allows damaged arms or legs to heal. Further injury can still worsen the condition.]

At the same moment, the old status warning changed.

[Fracture — Healing]

[Remaining Time: 05:00:00]

Magnus stared at the timer.

“Five hours.”

He flexed his fingers experimentally, then immediately stopped when pain shot through the arm.

“Yeah. I can live with five hours.”

A proper Cast would have shortened the healing time considerably, but the recipe remained far beyond his current medical knowledge. According to the system, crafting one required a much higher medical magazine level—Medical Lv19. Magnus currently had Bow Crafting Lv5 and nothing remotely close to that in medicine.

For now, the splint would have to be enough.

And once his arm healed, Magnus still had seven skill points waiting to be spent.