Unchosen Champion

The oil rig was lit by nothing but the waning moon when Coop moved to the fifth floor. It had taken until late in the evening for Coop to feel comfortable continuing further into the zombie infestation. He had to wait for his health and mana to recover after the previous fights.

When he first stepped foot on the fifth floor he was regretting his caution. The darkness gave the entire platform a spooky ambience that made him nervous. Deep shadows filled the corners of the platform, raising concerns about what could be lurking where Coop couldn’t see.

He carefully made his way along the narrow metal walkways that led to the first series of buildings. Ideally, he would spot whatever enemy awaited him long before they spotted him. He moved a lot more cautiously after his experience with the quick zombies.

When Coop rounded the next corner, he spied the occupants of the fifth floor. It was basically an army. He quickly estimated more than 200 zombies were present. They were lined up with as much discipline as one could expect from zombies, which wasn’t much. Coop inspected the rows of monsters and found that they were all the same regular zombies that acted as meat shields on the previous floors. He stayed still and continued to search for any elites within the crowd.

The zombies were lined up along the perimeter of the buildings, down the walkways and against the stark walls and rigid pipes. It seemed like they were waiting for directions. Coop thought it was lucky that they had all been confined to this offshore oil platform and hadn’t been able to roam where more people were. He could imagine the zombies quickly getting out of control. Their ability to spread through applying zombification buffs with bites could become a huge problem.

He continued observing nothing but aimless wandering from most of the zombies, until he spotted one moving with more purpose than the others. He tracked the zombie until it entered a darkened doorway that led further into one of the larger buildings. He suspected he would need to go inside to find the elites that were his quarry.

As he carefully picked his way through the platform, Coop felt like he was looking at a haunted house and hesitated, but he had already come this far, and he was still in a hurry to finish his quest, so he forged on. The front entrance needed to be avoided if he wanted to remain undetected, so he’d avoid kicking down the front door and going in guns blazing if he could.

Coop stuck to the shadows on the perimeter of the floor. He took a circuitous path toward the suspicious building, away from the mustering army of listless zombies. He would try to get in without alerting anything of his presence, and depending on what he found, he would have to decide on where and how to fight.

As he did his best to sneak around he lamented the fact that he didn’t have a stealth ability. This particular floor in the dead of night was giving him assassination mission vibes.

He reached the back of his target building stealthily enough to avoid detection. After climbing a series of pipes, he entered through a broken transom window. He paused in the darkness of the interior to let his eyes adjust before he moved forward.

Peeking around corners and delicately stepping through empty rooms, he was doing his best to check all of his corners and remember his escape route. After just a few rooms, he found his first group of zombies. He quickly inspected them to see what he was dealing with.

[Elite Human Zombie (Level 35)]