Luckily for Zane his inventory system was not tied directly to the system management feature. And though he had stored a massive excess of materials in Gravestone, he still had enough on him to build the basic camp features.
Of course, it required him to sell off the majority of his current blood crystal stockpile in order to get the gold necessary to purchase the blueprints. But by the time the night had ended Zane could look upon his camp with pride.
While there were no barriers to prevent outsiders from trespassing. Zane had built a primitive shelter which covered his bedroll. There was a space for firewood just outside, which sheltered it from the elements, not that such a thing really mattered while living in the desert.
As for his fire pit, it was dug at a safe distance away from his shelter, but still near enough to provide warmth to Zane in the event that he slept. Again, such a thing was not necessarily due to the nature of his undead body, but nevertheless strategic design was important when setting up his camp as it gave him more points.
And the more points Zane gained the closer his camp would be to Level 2, which was something that would allow him to purchase more blueprints. Above the campfire was a spit which not only acted as a means to primitively cook food but also as a means to hang pots over the fire for more extensive meal preparation.
There were small and primitive traps set nearby, whose intention was to either ensnare intruders, or to alert Zane to their presence. But that was where these developments ended. By the time he had finished constructing everything from scratch. The sun began to rise, and with it he saw a message appear in his system.
---
[Congratulations! You have improved your camp! Your camp is now Level 2!]
[Blueprints Unlocked:
Stone building set
Primitive kiln
Primitive forge
Primitive Crafting Bench]
---
When Zane saw this, he realized something that he would have rather left unthought... His life had suddenly changed from an RPG to a fucking survival game... Was this honestly his mother's sense of humor?
And those that did were like Elysium and Gravestone, lucky enough to have been blessed with an awakened survivor whose skill could provide electricity. Elsewhere, things weren't so simple. And the town Hawthorne was no exception to this rule.
Prior to the end of the world, Hawthorne had served as an Army base, or should I say it was a small town adjacent to an Army Munitions Depot. It was a military outpost designed to store and manufacture munitions of all kinds for the army to bused after the initial thirty days of any given war had passed.
By 2024, it was an outpost that had mostly been sold off to private contractors, and the town of Hawthorne was where its employees and their families resided. At most, a few thousand people resided here before the end of the world.
But what was surprising was that when Zane and his travel companions arrived outside the small town. They were shocked to see that walls had been erected around it. If not for Zane's excellent eyesight, then he would have never seen the walls.
Instead, the first thing he would have noticed was the echo of gunfire in the distance. And I'm not talking about small arms like rifles or machine guns. No, the thunderous sound that came towards him and his companions was one thing, and one thing only. Artillery.
If Zane were a normal human being, his fate would have been sealed in that moment. But he was no longer human, he was an awakened horde king. Naturally, he bolted past the 25 miles distance between him and the settlements walls. Dismissing his companions as he did so, in order to ensure they did not get left behind or god forbid struck by artillery.
---
Zane had crossed twenty-five miles in the span of a second. It was a feat that only he and the other Horde Kings in this world could accomplish. Hell, his location, which had previously been tracked by an observer, was hit shortly after he disappeared. Leaving his death to be "confirmed" on the radio.
That is, of course until the guards at the gate realized Zane was standing in front of him. The man pointed his rifle at Zane and screamed at him, his voice clearly panicked as he demanded to know how Zane had possibly survived the attack, let alone appear in front of the gate the next moment.
"What in the goddamn- how the hell did you survive that bombardment? Don't take a step further outsider!"
It was shocking to Zane, but Hawthorne appeared to have survived the apocalypse completely intact. Then again, it wasn't all that surprising. It was a small town in the middle of bumblefuck nowhere. There was roughly two and a half hours' distance from Hawthorne to the nearest civilized area, and that was by car.
The only reason anyone would stop through this godforsaken town was if they were travelling from the Reno/Tahoe area to Vegas, and were either too cheap to fly by plane, or had some other strange factor which demanded such a route.
Because of this, Zane's surprise at the settlement surviving quickly disappeared as he answered the man, who was looking at him as if he were an absolute anomaly.
And sure, Zane was significantly stronger than the most powerful awakened humans that he had come across thus far. But it was more of the weird equipment he was wearing. In other words, his armor that caught the sentry off guard.
It was actually because of the way the sentry was looking at Zane, that he came to a sudden realization, giving voice to his astonishment aloud, as he asked a single question to the man. Revealing just how isolated Hawthorne was from the rest of the world.
"Hold on a second.... You don't know about blood crystals do you?"