“Alright, I think I will put 50 points into strength, 70 points into vitality, and the rest into focus. That should do the deed, I believe. Show me my status now, please.”

  “Oh, yeah. System, could you display all the skills I could get with my coupon?” Ambros requests. ‘I’ve always wanted to do magic!’

  “Oh damn, that's a lot of skills. Please display them from best to worst.”

  “Well, this is a no-brainer. System, I use my shop coupon to get the barrier skill.” Ambros says, just as he does, his veins glow slightly blue as sharp pain courses throughout his body.

  “Damn, ouch, open skill list, System.”

  “System, can you show more details of the barrier manipulation skill? Is that something you can d-" as Ambros was about to finish his question, a new blue screen opened up.

  “Oh, hooray!”

  “I have no idea if defense from 54 damage is good, but sure. Let’s work with this. System, what does the one next to the skills name represent?”

  “Cool,” Ambros says, not paying much more attention to the System as he tries to create a barrier over his hand. When he focuses on a barrier appearing on his left elbow, a very light blue, transparent barrier appears and hovers over it. As he leaves the barrier there, he opens his status to see his essence force quickly depleting.

  Essence Force: 170

  Essence Force: 130

  Essence...

  “Very well, my essence force is depleting much faster than I initially thought,” he mumbles as he wills the barrier to disappear.

  “System, what is the time currently?”

  “Okay, should I go explore the destroyed city? I’m sure I could earn quite a few essence points and coins. I need food anyway. Yeah, I’ll do that.” he says to no one in particular as he stands up and winces when putting some weight on his injured leg. He sits back down as he falls deep into thought.

  A minute or two later, a new system announcement comes up, snapping Ambros from his inner debate.

  Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on the original website.

  “That’s exciting and, well nice. System, can you uh... open my status?”

  “Hm, nothing new here,” he mumbles as he pauses and stares into nothingness for a moment. “System, can you explain what the wasteland and new zones are?”

  “So, what would happen when a safe zone’s barrier is broken? Can the mutations once again enter, or are there worse consequences?”

  “Huh, how do I gain a higher authority? Does that have something to do with the evolving stuff you mentioned earlier?”

  “Well, how can I evolve?” Ambros questions, but the System did not offer an answer. ‘It seems that it’s something I must find out on my own, or maybe its just painfully obvious but I haven't thought of if.’ just as Ambros thinks that, a new system announcement opens up.

  “Oh yeah, the System mentioned leaderboards. System, how do you get on the leaderboards?”

  “Hm? Leaderboards.”

  “Hell yeah! Put me on there.”

  “Damn, taking the first place like that, I guess it’s thanks to killing that damn yellow bastard,” he mumbles as his eyes momentarily glance over to his injured and still slightly bloody leg.

  “Sweet! Ah, System, do you have anything that could heal my leg, please?”

  “System, display the cheapest one's first.”

  “Ah, I’ll take the Healing Gel, thanks a lot.”

  “No, thanks,” Ambros says as he takes out the gel from his inventory and rubs it on his leg, watching in marvel as the wound starts recovering itself. "Ah, one more thing, what are the, time attacks, thats what you said you were implementing, correct?"

  He nods in confirmation as he leans into the chair to relax a little.

  A little while later, Ambros pushes open the Pentagon building’s door and walks out with a confident smirk.

  “System, the time?”

  “Ah, the healing still took a little while. Anyway, this exiting the building shit was really cringe. So, where should I head? There is a zoo at the Smithsonian, if my memory serves me right, I’m sure there’s a bunch of mutations to kill there.” he says as he begins walking towards the place, smashing any mutations on the way there with his new sledgehammer.

  About half an hour later, Ambros finds himself in front of a small cabinet with a few turnstiles lined up near it. Ambros placed his hand on one of the turnstiles and lifted himself over it. He looked around to see the nearby plants having been trampled over or having simply died, likely due to the warmer weather recently and the heatwave that has been beginning to near along the new wasteland addition.

  Ambros walked over to the nearest exhibition that he was aware of, the hyenas to be exact. As he reached the place, his eyes darted around the place as a look of puzzlement etched its way across his face.

  “No mutations here, no corpses here, nothing. Like they vanished into thin air,” he said under his breath as he continued to walk around, making his way from a place where animals were supposed to reside to another.

  The only thing that was new about each of the places, was that there was either a giant hole in a wall, the glass was shattered or the bars were bent. “So they just came to a collective decision to say fuck you to the zoo and wandered off? Might as well go see where the giraffes were supposed to be…” he murmurs as he reads the nearest map of the place.

  When he arrived at the open field, surrounded by a thin layer of tripwire that was serving as a wall, he tilted his head quizzically. The surrounding place was relatively different from the previous exhibitions he was at previously. Dried blood was laying on the ground, surrounding two giraffe corpses that seemed to have been bitten in their necks. The ground had been brought up in pieces, as a giant part of the tripwire was missing.

  “I’m not sure how many giraffes there were here, but I think it’s safe to assume that these giraffes were killed by the evolved mutation I fought earlier. Ugh, I haven’t found any mutations so far, might as well explore the rest while I am at it, though.” he debated with himself as he finished with an impatient tone.

  He picked up a jog to finish seeing all of the zoo quicker, but just as he reached the area where the monkey cages were, a sudden dread of coldness washed over him, and he got a system message.