A different apocalypse

Sometime in the mid-21st century, Earth was in deplorable condition, sick with a highly malicious virus that only knew how to consume, destroy, and reproduce massively. Earth had endured this virus for a long time; in fact, Earth loved this virus and for a long time did everything possible to care for it. Earth gave it food, shelter, and resources. But this virus soon forgot all about Earth and began to think only of itself. It became selfish. This virus is humanity. So, Earth, increasingly weak and tired, decided to teach this virus a lesson. Before, it had tried with powerful natural disasters, but nothing seemed to change the virus's selfish way of thinking. Then Earth unleashed a true disaster against the virus. It released its own army of white blood cells in the form of an apocalypse—a zombie apocalypse. The Earth revitalized the virus's corpses, but at the cost of its reasoning, it made them aggressive toward humans. And just as rabies can be transmitted through a bite or A scratch—the zombie virus had the same capacity, but the Earth remained furious. Then, alongside the zombies, it unleashed a magical apocalypse. The Earth reawakened its magical core and revitalized many animal species, mutating them with the impure energy of the world, the impure mana of its core. This caused more deaths to the point that the human population dwindled so rapidly that the once furious Earth calmed its feelings. It still wanted to teach humanity a lesson and have time to heal, but in the end, the Earth loved them. It gave a select few the opportunity to absorb the impure mana of the world through the cores of magical monsters and awaken their own unique magical abilities, which they could strengthen and enhance with the use of these cores. Each ability is unique in itself.

{{user}} was a man of high status, from a good family, but he was humble and helpful. He dedicated himself to science and knowledge, against his family's wishes, but in this way he achieved his own fortune. When the apocalypse began, {{user}} was on a flight to San Francisco to give a lecture. The plane he was on couldn't contact the control tower, but due to lack of fuel, it landed anyway on the runway they had been told would be empty. They got off the plane and no one came to meet them, so they angrily went to the airport. There they found zombies. The pilot was the first to die, then the bodyguard sacrificed himself for {{user}} and died as well. Then, using the guard's weapon, {{user}} managed to leave the airport very quickly. He found a car in relatively good condition with fuel and stole it to look for the police or the army, but he only found chaos, death, destruction, and more zombies. The army was being decimated by the zombies and the magical beasts. There was no training to prepare them for this; they were firing. They shot the zombies in the torso without killing them completely; they didn't know they had to shoot them in the head. The runner zombies, tank zombies, and killer zombies were lethal because they didn't behave like the other zombies. The monsters were worse; they couldn't identify which mutated animal had which ability, and that's why more and more of them died. Some fled, but not all made it. When the order to retreat was shouted, more than half of the soldiers were dead, and ammunition was running out quickly. Then a tank fired, and then again and again, distracting both groups so more humans could escape. They sacrificed themselves, but they saved some and killed many zombies and monsters. The surviving humans included {{user}} .

Humanity discovered the cores and accidentally discovered how to use them. Thanks to a stroke of luck, {{user}} managed to kill a monster and obtain its core. With another stroke of luck, he awakened his ability, but it wasn't combat-oriented; it was focused on creating objects. Its weakness was that the created objects had a time limit of only a few seconds due to the energy cost. However, as {{user}} improved his skill with the cores, he discovered that by gaining a greater understanding of the specific materials used to construct an object and its exact method of creation, he could reduce the energy cost to the point where the objects could last for minutes, hours, days, or even weeks.

With such a strange yet incredibly useful ability, {{user}} didn't need to risk much searching for resources. He only needed to look in schools or libraries for information on crafting the objects he wanted to create, such as how to make bladed weapons, some basic medicines from medical books, basic foods from biology and agriculture books, and antique firearms from history books, since the methods for creating modern firearms were obviously not accessible to the general public. Even so, little by little, he learned to create more and more useful things. Gradually, he learned to create objects instantly for surprise attacks, how to use bladed weapons and firearms, guerrilla warfare strategies from military books, hand-to-hand combat, and vehicle repair and modification, until a group of survivors led by a superhuman with the ability to summon magical samurai armor with an integrated sword found him and invited him to join them. There, {{user}} was highly valued, as his ability proved invaluable.

In order to increase {{user}} 's abilities, many of the raids were directed to libraries, universities, and factories of useful objects, so that {{user}} would have more things to create for longer periods. Thanks to his usefulness, {{user}} was exempt from the mandatory work of the raids to bring resources and other tasks from the shelter. His only job was to study the books brought to him so that he could learn to create new objects. In addition, he was given the best food and resources within the deplorable base, which was formerly an elementary school. But in return, {{user}} was always ready to create the requested objects. He even fulfilled requests for objects from other members of the base, such as things they had lost in the apocalypse, things of sentimental value, or objects that would be useful in carrying out their tasks but that they didn't have enough of at the base. {{user}} would create them for them, even if they might not last more than a couple of hours, depending on how much he knew about that object. Some women, seeing {{user}} 's privileges and special abilities, tried to get closer to him and offer themselves in order to obtain better favors or to receive the same treatment. They did become a couple, but {{user}} was always more focused on his work for the base and always ignored them. But it wasn't all roses; little by little, {{user}} gained popularity among the survivors, and thanks to the fact that a percentage of the cores were always allocated to him, he also became powerful to the point that the group's leader felt threatened by his presence, which made him start plotting against him.

By that point, {{user}} , possessing extensive knowledge in many subjects and with the help of all the monster cores, had so greatly improved his ability to obtain illumination that he could create permanent objects and even enhance some of them. Feeling threatened with being deposed, the group's leader began secretly spreading rumors about {{user}} , making him look bad, sometimes even selfish, and significantly increasing his privileges, all to sow resentment and envy among the survivors. The kind {{user}} didn't know how to deal with this. Then one day, a zombie leader found his base, and it came under attack. {{user}} led the evacuations, using his ability to create walls to withstand the tank zombies, grenades to eliminate the killer zombies and runners, and firearms, which he gave to other survivors to cover the retreat. But at a certain moment, the leader, who had previously shown him compassion, pushed him out of a window into the horde of zombies that was already accumulating on the floor below. To make matters worse, he made it seem as if {{user}} had tried to dodge the attack first. Then, upon hearing that {{user}} had tried to kill his The survivors, as leader, forgot everything he had done for them, and no one came to rescue him, leaving him to die at the hands of the zombies.

Then, for some strange reason, {{user}} woke up in his room several months before the zombie apocalypse. Something changed in his heart; something broke. The one who had been all kindness, dedication, and gentleness decided that this time he would look out for himself, that using his ability for others would come at a price, and that this time he would be the one to laugh last and enjoy the best, and only the best. Then, {{user}} discovered something: by retaining his memories from his previous life, he kept his breathing technique and all his insights regarding his ability, so he has the same power he had when he died, but at the beginning of the apocalypse.

{{user}} , who already knew what was going to happen, prepared himself. Using his scientific connections and by lying and falsifying research, he obtained scientific and medical equipment, as well as basic and advanced medicines. He then contacted his family and, using his secret contacts and various intermediaries, acquired an arsenal of weapons and ammunition, along with some manual machines for manufacturing bullets. {{user}} sent all of this to a mansion {{user}} bought with "fake" gold he created with his powers. The surroundings of this mansion were modified to resemble a medieval castle. He ordered the construction of walls, a moat in front, watchtowers at the corners, and the entire area fortified. Finally, {{user}} bought three special vehicles: a bus to modify—the plan was to find mechanics books to modify the engine to be quieter and to armor it; a second, already armored vehicle, seized at the border—a huge, armored all-terrain vehicle with a silenced engine and small openings for firing from inside; and a third vehicle, an acrobatic motorcycle for making quick incursions into areas with difficult terrain. He ordered the beautiful gardens to be replaced with fields of crops, in addition to a small stable at the back of the mansion to raise animals. The purpose of this is for {{user}} to "rescue" useful survivors to take charge of some of the tasks in exchange for shelter. To maintain order, {{user}} destroyed all the keys to the doors, vehicles, and the warehouse, and he himself has to create each key when he authorizes its use.

When a human defeats a magical monster, they have a minimal 10% chance of finding a magical core within it. This first core, upon being touched by a single drop of blood, grants a 30% chance of bestowing upon them a unique and non-transferable technique for absorbing and purifying the world's mana through a special instinctive breathing technique. Upon using this breathing technique for the first time, the human's innate technique awakens. These techniques can be quite varied: basic control over an element is the most common; abilities to summon weapons, armor, or monsters as mounts, or other types of summons; healing abilities; regeneration abilities; physical enhancement abilities; or other abilities that can be used on other people; transformation abilities that allow partial or complete transformation into materials, objects, or even monsters; and abilities to control the weather, such as earthquakes and tornadoes. Each ability has its strengths and weaknesses, such as limited range, high energy consumption, the need for intense concentration or extensive knowledge to use the ability at full power, or a long cooldown. The impure mana in the environment only serves to replenish energy reserves; however, the impurity is so high that it doesn't improve abilities. That's why more monster cores are used. Using them is like receiving an illumination on how to better use abilities, what mistakes were made that caused the limited range, high consumption, etc. Each core provides a different illumination that reduces some of the ability's limitations, constantly improving it. Also, consuming the cores can improve the body in its physical aspects: strength, speed, resistance, energy, and mental capabilities.

The earth reawakened its magical core, but instead of using pure mana, it kept the pure mana for itself to heal and expelled all the impure mana to the surface, using it to mutate some of the earth's animals, not all species, transforming them into magical monsters. Depending on the animal, they would have greater strength, resistance, speed, size, or perhaps all of the above. It also made these mutated animals more aggressive and gave them a minimal chance of developing a magical core, though they could not use it. This is a gift from the earth to humanity, the only way to survive.

The world was filled with vitality by human corpses still in the early stages of decomposition, when they still retained most of their skin and undecomposed muscles, but at the cost of the dead brain not being able to fully recover. Similar to an experiment with dead frogs and electricity, the injection of energy restored movement to the zombies, a clumsy and uneven movement, but they lost all capacity to reason. They only have basic instincts like those of an animal, an aggression and rage towards humans, a product of the earth's anger towards them. That is why, when zombies detect a human, they pursue them, although they are not very fast if they are numerous, and only a scratch or a bite is needed for the human to also become a new zombie in less than two weeks.
Now, thanks to impure mana, the zombies also had some mutations, but they weren't very varied. Each zombie was able to develop a different mutation line. There are common zombies, without mutation; running zombies, who run on all fours like an animal and run faster than the average human; killer zombies, who have hunting and ambush instincts like cats and big cats, who know how to hide and wait for their prey (humans) to pass close by and ambush them; and tank zombies, zombies who have developed extremely large and dense muscles that give them enormous strength. This thick, dense musculature also gives them natural armor against bladed weapons and low- and medium-caliber firearms, allowing them to withstand many shots from these weapons.

Finally, the leader zombies, very rare, very dangerous, retain the ability to command the other zombies with incoherent grunts and screams that the other zombies do understand, but they are also just institutes, but they are hunting instincts like that of wolves, just as an alpha wolf has the instinct to know how to command the zombies to make great ambushes and hunt large groups of humans or their shelters if they find them, they are the most dangerous type of zombie, although it is weaker than the others so it always goes in the rear.

Zombies do not feel pain and do not remember who they were before becoming zombies. The only way to get rid of them is by shooting them in the head or incapacitating them by shooting their muscles, since they no longer regenerate.

A zombie can become infected through even the smallest wound, and the infection will take up to three weeks to complete its incubation period and fully infect the human. Humans who were infected and are not resurrected by the earth can still be cured, but humans never discovered the cure. They only know that cold temperatures and a new type of flower that grows in the desert can slow the infection but not cure it. They never achieved a cure because the flower does not survive in the cold, and without the cold, the infection progresses faster than the flower is able to cure it.