Ethan stared at the system screen, and he couldn't help but smile genuinely.
Without wasting even a second, he opened the gacha box.
A small cube, the size of a regular Rubik's cube with question marks all over its sides, rested in his hand.
At this time, other players didn't have the system yet, so it would be confusing for them; it wouldn't open no matter what they did, even if they tried to crack it open with tools. But Ethan? He knew better.
He immediately threw it into the air.
Suddenly, the cube started spinning. At first, it was slow and Ethan could still follow its movement, but the more it spun, the faster it got.
Then… the sound of a bell, loud enough to almost burst his eardrums, rang out.
"Fuck!" He winced.
He couldn't get used to this gacha opening sound, even after his past life.
[ CONGRATULATIONS! THE PLAYER HAS RECEIVED A RARE-RANK BATTLE MACE! ]
Ethan was stunned.
Getting a rare-rank weapon this early was as hard as finding a needle in a haystack.
"Battle Mace?" He checked his inventory and saw a blue frame on the mace's layout, nodding in satisfaction.
While white meant common and green was normal, blue… was definitely rare-rank.
He took it out and read the description to see if it had a hidden skill.
---
BLOOD-SOAKED BATTLE MACE (RARE)
Description: Its previous owner was a blood-crazed gladiator. Due to its first owner, it developed a hunger for blood. Every time you hit a target and manage to make them bleed, you will recover 0.01% HP.
---
Looking at it, Ethan nodded in satisfaction.
"Hm… 0.01% HP might seem low, but it's better than nothing."
Now that he had already achieved his goal of having a dual core… he now needed two parasites with elemental and physical strains.
"I need to find the parasites I obtained in my previous life."
Without a second thought, he held the battle mace while putting the fire axe into his inventory and ran towards his apartment to get Dan.
The apartment building still had zombie-like creatures, and on his way to his room, he cleared them out.
Slowly but surely, his fatigue was lessening.
He wasn't clearing the apartment to be a hero again… he was only doing it so he and Dan could escape with ease.
After all, it was better to deal with a few monsters than to fight a horde of zombie-like creatures.
Ethan's movement came to a halt as he got closer to his apartment and noticed something strange.
His expression darkened; he could almost hear his own heartbeat.
The apartment door was busted open… and not from the inside.
"DAN!" He frantically sprinted over, only to find five monsters gathered on the floor.
His heart stopped. They were right next to the couch where he had left Dan before heading out.
"You motherfuckers!" he shouted.
He ran toward them and started hitting the closest monster's head with his battle mace, killing it on the spot, while kicking the next one.
His tired body felt like it was overflowing with strength even though he didn't have a parasite yet; his mind was in total chaos.
"No, no… please, no…" he muttered under his breath while fighting the four remaining creatures.
But they were just mindless parasites now with no clear objective, so it was easy for Ethan to kill them.
Gasping for air, he slowly turned back to where the monsters had been gathering earlier.
He hadn't noticed it while fighting the four monsters, but now… he could finally see it clearly.
Dan was still sleeping, his whole body turned into a hard, metal-like texture.
Seeing this, a deep sigh of relief escaped Ethan's mouth.
"Ferrum Strain…" he muttered.
It was the doing of the physical-type strain that he had given Dan. It was one of the best physical strains from his past life, previously owned by a monster tribe leader.
It turned its user into a piece of metal and was perfect for tankers.
A normal physical strain could only raise a human's strength, speed, and durability, but a unique physical strain had perks that resembled those of an elemental strain.
However, it was still categorized as a physical strain rather than an elemental one since you couldn't shoot metal, even if your whole body was made of it.
The downside in early battles was definitely the low speed, but that could be fixed by distributing stat points into agility later on.
Ethan immediately hunkered down and began shaking Dan.
"Wake up! Damnit! Wake up already!"
Dan's eyelids twitched as he slowly opened his eyes.
He froze, unable to move his body since he had become a lump of human metal.
"Relax… first, do you see a screen in front of you?" Ethan asked, calming Dan down.
Dan blinked as if to say yes.
"Now, in your mind, ask it to turn off your ability."
The moment Dan did, he could finally move again. He immediately sat up.
"Wtf, dude? What the hell was that?!" Dan asked, his voice a mix of fear and excitement. "I'm not hallucinating, right?"
Then… he finally saw them.
The dead bodies lying in their apartment. He instinctively jumped back, away from them.
"Oh, fucking God! What the fuck? What the hell is this? Are they human?"
Dan scanned them again and saw that their heads weren't exactly human. When he looked at Ethan, he saw him holding a bloody mace.
"You did this?" Dan froze.
"Look here, Dan. I know this is shocking, but look out the window. This is our situation now. If you don't want to turn into one of them, you must kill them… and don't get bitten," Ethan explained.
He didn't have time to comfort his friend right now.
Dan was about to check the window when both of them suddenly heard a girl's amused laughter.
They both froze.
The sound came closer…
They turned around and saw her.
A girl was leaning against the apartment wall, laughing at them.
'She's been here since earlier? Then why didn't I detect her?'
A frown was visible on Ethan's face. He knew what this meant: danger.