Chapter 29 Bronze
While Oliver cursed out, he let go of the Reinforced Stone Dagger.
If he wouldn’t done that, his body might have either been mashed into a pulp or smashed into the wall next to them.
The tall zombie thrashed around violently, using its other hand to attempt to grasp Oliver.
However, thanks to Oliver using his level-up status points mostly to improve his agility stat, he could evade the zombie’s attack rather easily.
Having angered the tall zombie, its full attention was on Oliver.
This gave Dilan the required opportunity to push himself beyond his limits as he catapulted himself towards the zombie before jumping behind its head that was turned towards him.
Using all the energy he could muster, Dilan thrust his spear upon reaching the highest momentum, a faint shimmer shrouded the Reinforced Stone Spear’s blade.
Just a moment later, Dilan’s attack reached the designated target, piercing through both the damaged Reinforced Stone Dagger and the cracked skull of the tall zombie.
‘Sorry about the dagger,’ Dilan could only apologize in his head as a bright smile emerged on his face.
Clearly sensing how the tip of his spear pierced through the skull, reaching the softer muscles of its brain, he couldn’t help himself anymore as he tried to push his spear further deep into its head.-.
However, this was not even necessary as the tall zombie let out a weird groan before it fell to the ground.
While collapsing face down, it nearly squashed Oliver, who had to jump back to save himself.
Several seconds later, the tall zombie was still writhing on the floor, thrashing its arms and legs as if it would jump up any second and eat both Dilan and Oliver.
Yet, when Dilan jumped on its back without any hesitation to pierce the Reinforced Stone Spear in the back of its head once again, the zombie slowly stopped moving around.
With a sigh of relief, Dilan looked at the empty corridor, his eyes landing on the small and perfectly stacked pile of zombie corpses.
There were no walking undeads left, which gave him the opportunity to look at the tall zombie.
“My…dagger…” Oliver just mumbled with a frown, while holding the hilt of the Reinforced Stone Dagger that now had half of its blade broken off.
This caused Dilan to smile wryly but there was nothing he could do to restore it. He understood the value of the Reinforced Stone Dagger well.
But there had been no way for him to pierce through the hard skull of the high-leveled zombie if it were not for Oliver’s preparational work.
As such, it was sad to lose such a good weapon, and now they were only left with the makeshift daggers crafted from the horns of a horned rat.
With that in mind, Dilan’s smile disappeared as he turned serious before he widened the gap in the zombie’s skull.
Not long after he found the Essence crystal which he took out.
Bronze colored Essence swirled through the Essence crystal making Dilan stare at it in astonishment.
‘Huh? A colored Essence crystal?’
The crystal he held in his hand was certainly not an ability. As such, there had to be a reason for the Essence crystal to have a bronze color.
Unfortunately, he was unable to ponder over it for long as he heard several footsteps from further ahead of them.
Immediately he readied himself to fight and changed his stance, but instead of zombies, he found himself facing the three nurses, whose outlines he had seen earlier.
He calmed down a little but didn’t even think of lowering his guard.
The nurses took a few breaths when they arrived in front of them. Their faces looked exhausted and he could see bags under their eyes, while their movements were sluggish as well.
They hadn’t slept more than four hours during the last five days, but none of that mattered right now.
Finally, someone had come to their rescue, and they were strong enough to defeat the gigantic zombie.
“Thanks for rescuing us, we thought that we were going to die in there!!” The youngest nurse spoke in a relieved voice and her eyes that shone with tears now held a glimmer of hope.
Her eyes were fixated on Dilan.
She saw him fighting against the tall zombie, right from ‘heroically’ cutting off the monster’s arm to the final attack.
“Well, no problem. We just wanted to clear the corridor. But it’s great that there were more survivors…” Dilan simply said, not further bothering about the young nurse’s behavior.
His focus was on the small stack of zombie corpses further behind the nurses.
He pointed at them, while turning his head towards the remaining three members of their group.
“Ailee, Pierre, use the Essence crystals of the zombie corpses next to the nurse’s room to level up! If there are some Essence crystals left afterward, take them back to the others.”
After giving out instructions, his attention turned back to the Bronze colored Essence crystal.
‘Why a different color? The zombie was definitely still Tierless, so why does it have a different color? Does it have a higher potency or some other use than to absorb it?’
His mind was rattling, and he tried to figure out if it was the most efficient for him to just absorb the Essence crystal, or if he should do something else with it.
“Just take it!” Oliver said while shrugging his shoulders.
He was still sad about the loss of his weapon.
But at the same time, he could tell that Dilan had to sacrifice the dagger to kill the unique zombie.
“If there is a special effect, you should rather absorb the Essence crystal to test out how valuable it is.
That is better than thinking about giving it to Bianne. She can experiment with other Essence crystals.”
Dilan came to the same conclusion. Thus he absorbed the Essence crystal after Oliver told him to do so.
It didn’t look like Oliver wanted the Essence crystal either way.
[ Essence of a Tierless Level 5 Gluttonous Zombie has been absorbed→ +0.8 Strength, +0.6 Health, +0.5 Mana]
[Essence pool has been filled. Host reached level 5! +0.5 Status points can be allocated!]
‘I definitely got more Essence from it than I expected…but other than that, a level 5 monster should provide fewer stat points, or am I wrong?’
Dilan guessed that he was able to level up and that he received so many status points because the absorbed essence was ‘Bronze.’
This was something Dilan presumed to be the reason for the Gluttonous zombie to be so powerful.
The theory he had in mind was something that excited him.
It not only told him that special types of monsters existed but also that they could not be included in his theory about the status points he could receive from one kind of monster!